Chapter 19
Liana
Liana woke to voices coming from behind the door.
“I have agreed with Captain Darin to bring the girl up for questioning now.”
Amron.
“My lord, the king’s orders are that only he can—”
“Do you want to go up to the great hall and ask him? I can wait.”
“No, my lord. Please—”
“Then stand aside. If my father has objections, he can take them up with me in the morning.”
Liana was already on her feet when the door opened and Amron peered inside.
“Come quickly,” he said.
As she passed through the door, he threw his cloak over her, swathing her in the warm velvet that smelled of him. The two guards stood aside to let them pass, hands on their hilts, suspicion mixed with reluctance on their faces. Still, they didn’t have the audacity to draw a weapon on a prince.
As they rushed through the net of dark passages, she asked, “Is Captain Darin waiting for us?” dreading her father’s reaction.
“No, he doesn’t know I’m here,” Amron said. “I bluffed, counting on the fact that a couple of sleepy night guards who’d rather be gambling than standing in a drafty corridor wouldn’t have the gall to stop me.”
Her chilled body objected to running, but she kept up with him, barefooted on the smooth wood of the back corridors. “Who told you I was here, then?”
“My mother.”
Liana didn’t ask how Queen Orsiana knew she was the same girl Amron had dashed off with, or why she thought it was important her son knew what had happened to her.
In the few brief interactions Liana had had with the queen, she’d always acted with purpose, even if that purpose wasn’t always clear to those around her.
They were climbing up the servants’ stairs to the second floor. “Where are we going?” she asked.
“To the only place where I can hide you at the moment.”
His chamber. Despite the exhaustion and fear and hurt, she felt a spark of excitement at the thought that they would be alone. They ran through the familiar passage built in the wall and slipped through the door, behind a tapestry, and into a room with a solitary candle burning on the desk.
A sense of familiarity washed over Liana. It wasn’t the same room he’d used when they lived together, but it was undoubtedly his, nevertheless. Crowded, but organized, filled with the books and art he loved, his scent lingering like a ghost of his presence. It felt like home.
Amron lit several more candles, letting warm light wash over the room. He was still dressed in his ceremonial garb for the wedding—he must have rushed to her as soon as he’d been free to leave. She draped his fine cloak over a chair; it would be a shame to ruin it.
He turned to look at her. “Gods,” he said. “What happened to you?”
There was a small mirror on the washstand. It showed her a woman she barely recognized: tangled hair, dress torn to ribbons, dirty face splattered with blood, a nasty gash on her arm.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
“It’s just cuts and bruises.” She examined the wound on her arm: Ferisa’s blade had cut deep, yet it had already started closing without being sewn shut. “I heal very fast.”
“It would be wise to clean them.” He opened the door, exchanged a few muffled words with someone standing outside, then returned to her. “Sit down, please.”
She picked a simple wooden chair, unwilling to leave traces of mud on fine fabrics.
“Your father told me about you,” he said.
She wondered how a father who barely knew her had introduced her to the man she loved. “How much did he tell you?”
“Only the important bits.”
The bit about her mother, too—she saw it on his face. Yet Amron was discreet almost to a fault, as always. Despite the obvious curiosity, he didn’t pry, aware that divine blood was not the wonderful magic the legends portrayed it to be, but a dangerous curse.
“He couldn’t tell me how a girl who’d never left Till before could travel across half the kingdom alone, without money or protection.
And, more importantly, he couldn’t tell me why you were here in Abia.
” He poured some water from the jug into a porcelain basin and brought it to a little round table near Liana’s chair.
He put a sponge and a towel beside the basin.
“Here, this will do for now. Wash yourself, I won’t watch.
” He walked to the window. “I thought you’d tell him more than you told me at the party, but all he knew was that you wanted to speak to me again. ”
Liana removed her torn dress and thin linen shift. The water was warm, the sponge soft. She rubbed off the worst of the grime from her face, then proceeded to wash her body, dripping on the fine carpet. The water turned brown with streaks of pink.
“I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say, back then. I only knew things would go wrong at your brother’s wedding, so I came to warn you.”
“Does that have anything to do with your divine gifts?”
It was still night outside, behind the glass panels. A black moonless curtain dotted with stars. If Amron could see the reflection of the room—and Liana—in the window, she didn’t mind one bit.
“Yes, although not in the way you might think.”
“Can you see the future?” he asked.
There was no set future, she’d figured out as much and Morana had confirmed it. Still: “I can see possible outcomes and they are all quite bad,” she said.
She dried herself with the towel and, deciding her clothes were unsalvageable, wrapped herself in it. It barely covered her from breasts to hips. “Do you have a hairbrush?”
“Beside the bed.”
She ran her fingers through her thick locks, removing the twigs and leaves, and then brushed her hair until it fell in shiny waves that reached below her waist.
“You can turn now,” she said.
He turned and narrowed his eyes. It was an oddly piercing gaze, going through her and beyond her. “I don’t know how, but we know each other quite well, don’t we?” he said.
“Yes.” A whisper that barely slipped past her lips.
He took one step towards her, then stopped, ridiculously regal in his blue silk brocade.
His shadow danced on the wall behind him.
As he studied her, his fingers touched his neck distractedly, and slid under his gossamer-thin linen shirt, following his collarbone.
It was an invitation he was unaware of, an intimate, absent-minded gesture she’d seen him make when he wanted her. It was an opening.
“How is that possible?” he asked.
The sight of his exposed throat distracted her. You are mine, she wanted to tell him, I’ve had you a thousand times and I want you a thousand more, but caution sealed her lips. Still, what she couldn’t say with words, she could express with a touch.
She closed the distance between them and took his hand. “You hate to be touched by strangers,” she said, “and yet, my touch feels good.”
His breathing turned ragged as he gently pulled away. “I don’t think this is wise.”
Light as a feather falling, she placed her other hand between his collarbones, where his fingers had lingered a moment ago. A pink flush swept over his neck and face. Her fingers slid up and around, to the back of his head, into his hair, twisting the long, silky strands. “And if I pull here—”
He shivered, yielding to her tug. Letting his breath out, he opened his mouth a little, and she thought, surely, this would be the moment he’d kiss her. Instead, very slowly, he touched the silver locket nestled between her breasts. “What’s in there?” he asked.
Her eyes glued to his face, she fumbled with the clasp and opened it, revealing the lock of golden hair coiled inside.
“Whose hair—” he started, and stopped. He wasn’t the only man with that particular shade of dark Amrian gold, and yet it was perfectly plain that the lock was his.
She shut the locket, watching him closely as confusion and desire fought in his eyes.
“Amron,” she said.
And then someone knocked on the door.
He shook his head as if waking from a dream, and went to open it. He exchanged a few words with someone standing outside, and when he turned, closing the door, he had a bundle of clothes in his arms.
The moment was gone, she saw it clearly, and the uncanny recognition that had cracked his shell and made him show his desire evaporated into thin air. He was back to his old self: restrained, careful, hiding behind good manners.
“I got a little carried away a moment ago. I apologize if I made you uncomfortable,” he said.
“You didn’t,” she said, but there was no going back to intimacy, not when his mind was already on different things.
“I got you a uniform, it’s the least suspicious thing I could get at this hour. My mother has female guards; in a palace this crowded, no one will question you.”
He laid it on the chair and turned away from her once more.
There was nothing left to do but put it on.
At least it was practical and it had trousers, high-waisted and tied at the ankles, along with a shirt and a short tunic with the royal emblem.
A leather belt—without the sword, unfortunately—and a pair of leather sandals came with it.
The whole ensemble fit her surprisingly well, almost as if Amron knew her exact measurements.
Or had spent more time watching her than she was aware of.
She plaited her hair. “Do you have something I could tie it with?” she asked.
He rummaged through his drawers and came up with a satin ribbon, royal blue like her uniform. “This should do,” he said.
It might have been a coincidence, but more probably, it was some god’s idea of a joke. Liana trembled as she touched the ribbon, an exact copy of the one his last letters to her had been tied with.
Somewhere beyond the divine curtain, two days and seventeen years away, he was dead, gone from the world, unattainable to her.
A sense of desperate urgency overcame her, the need to grab his wrist, pull him close, and kiss him roughly.
But that wouldn’t do. The deal was for him to kiss her, not the other way round.
“Is everything alright?” he asked.